I am not sure how I feel about Christmas really. I am not saying I have not enjoyed it but there is something in me that rebels against the imperative to do more, to buy more. Maybe it is just plain laziness....
We had a lovely day. On Christmas Eve we went to the cathedral for Midnight Mass. Then we slept in. We opened our presents to each other, well i say opened, they were not actually wrapped... Then we had breakfast and watched some TV. Then we cooked our roast and watched more TV.... And it was all lovely.
Today we see his family and exchange presents and in a few days, weeks time we see mine and exchange more presents. No pressure.... I have avoided last minute shop buying on the whole and done most of it online... The only shopping I did last minute was a last couple of food items.
Christmas cards and decorations were last minute though, and feeble. A few cards passed to colleagues on Christmas Eve to avoid offence.... A couple of decorations in the window to make it look like we tried.... Who is it all for? What is it all for? A list of jobs done, because it is Christmas and thats what we do.
I liked our relaxed Christmas Day.... I also like family Christmases, like last year where we were able to escape to mine. I think Christmas only really has meaning in the context of family.
I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, celebrated in what ever way they wanted, with their loved ones...
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
Saturday, 22 December 2012
2012
So, the world did not end, but then, nobody really expected it to, did they? I hoped for a change though.... I guess though, looking back is the only way to judge true change and when big changes are afoot, it is often hard to judge the pivotal moment. I wanted to feel the Dreamworlds come closer to our reality. There is still plenty of time for things to happen, there is plenty happening. So many bad things that to a stable, happy civilization looking back on our history of right now would be amazed.
This has been a tough week for me. I have been pretty ill, probably with food poisoning which has left me with an oversensitive stomach. What was hardest though was it threw me sideways, literally. I had vertigo to begin with and then just poor balance. Even now a week later my balance does not feel quite right. The world feels a little wrong. And part of me wonders if that connects somehow to the changing of the ages...
Then work announced redundancies. Yes my job is in danger, but even sadder is the fact that my little work family will be broken up. Things will not be easy for however stays either. Part of me considers what I would do if I was let go and I am not sure it would be such a bad thing.... I like the idea of having a couple of different part time jobs and doing different things.
I guess it doesn't matter if the world has changed or not, I have and F has too. And we are going to keep on changing, walking forward on this path.
This has been a tough week for me. I have been pretty ill, probably with food poisoning which has left me with an oversensitive stomach. What was hardest though was it threw me sideways, literally. I had vertigo to begin with and then just poor balance. Even now a week later my balance does not feel quite right. The world feels a little wrong. And part of me wonders if that connects somehow to the changing of the ages...
Then work announced redundancies. Yes my job is in danger, but even sadder is the fact that my little work family will be broken up. Things will not be easy for however stays either. Part of me considers what I would do if I was let go and I am not sure it would be such a bad thing.... I like the idea of having a couple of different part time jobs and doing different things.
I guess it doesn't matter if the world has changed or not, I have and F has too. And we are going to keep on changing, walking forward on this path.
Friday, 14 December 2012
Web of Life
Another big thing for me recently has been some breakthroughs in tracing my family tree...
My maternal Grandfathers side of the family as always been intriguing. There is mystery there for sure. My Grandfather was a music critic, but a well loved one. He was close to making a breakthrough and writing for one of the national newspapers but he died of Hodgkins leaving a fiance, an ex-wife and two children.
He fought in the Second World War in India and he rode a horse and may possibly have been a PoW. His family was very poor, his Dad dead and he often found himself in a Childrens Home with his brother. There are hints of abuse while in care. There are hints of lots of things to be honest but precious few facts. What is clear though is how respected and loved he was. Years and years later my uncle visited a pub in the town my Grandfather had worked in, and was recognised as a son of my grandfathers...
So it is unclear, the story of my Great Grandfather Owen Edgar, because most of it is just too recent. He was a Furnishing Assistant and fought in the First World War and may have died of TB but I have no idea when... He first appears on a census in 1901 at the age of 8 living with his father William Owen and Annie. When I was able to find his 1911 census record though, things changed. The 1911 census lists the length of the marriage and the number of children born to the woman and how many are still alive and dead. Annie never had any children and had not been married to William Owen long enough to be Owen Edgar's Mother. A pencil written note on the census record confirmed that this was correct and Annie was not Owen Edgar's Mother.
Now this branch of the family has a common surname and lived in London. Finding them was impossible because I had no way to separate them from others. I decided to order Owen Edgar's birth certificate and this gave me an address for them in 1893 and his Mother's maiden name, she was called Kate.
My next step was to find their wedding details and this again was very, very hard. in 1893, they lived within the bounds of Greater London but in 1892, they were based only a few streets away, but it counted as Middlesex. It took me hours of searching to find them, but I did and I finally ordered the wedding certificate and received it last weekend.
I already knew that William Owen was a Draper but I discovered his father was called John and worked as a Millwright and that Kate's father was called Edmond L something and was a Schoolmaster. And I still could not find any of them.
The wedding certificate gave an address for William Owen in 1892, so I decided to hunt through the censuses for that address and see if William or any relative has been living there only a year before. This took some time as the district had nearly 100 sub-sections and I had to wade through, accompanied by a map of London, to find the right area. When I did there was no sign of William Owen or Kate, but there was a Walter Thomas. This was really important, because he appears as a witness on the wedding certificate!
At another dead end, I decided to start a family tree for Walter Thomas and see if it connected at all to either of them. Walter had several brothers but I paid more attention to his sister Caroline because girls change their names. Caroline married an Edward Argent and this was really important because William Owen's second wife, Annie, was an Argent too.
On looking at the census's it becomes clear that Caroline was Edward's third wife and that he had had three children with his first wife. The 1881 census shows the family which includes a daughter Ann and a niece, Kate Davis. So William Owen married Kate, using one of Kate's Uncle's address, Walter Thomas. Kate had been brought up by her Aunt Caroline in the house of her cousin by marriage, Ann. When Kate died, William Owen was married again, but this time to Kate's cousin Ann(ie). This makes sense... Annie would have been the perfect person to keep house and care for Owen Edgar.
So Kate was probably an orphan. I eventually found her both on the 1891 census and the 1871 census, both listing her as being born in Kent, obviously whoever answered the 1881 census in her adopted family was a little fuzzy on exactly where she had been born.
Kate's parents were Edmond Louis and Eliza. Eliza shared the same surname as Walter Thomas and Caroline (before she was maried) and is obviously the family connection but I have been unable to prove the connection. Children appear on one census, disappear off the next one and reappear again. This is a family that was fairly fluid in it's child care because the Father appears to have been bringing them up alone. I have yet to find any trace of Eliza before her marriage.
Edmond Louis is also an interesting enigma. He was in his 40s when he had Kate and appears to have led a very full life but discrepancies make it hard to say that I am dealing with one person who did all these things. Before his marriage he certainly moved around and appears as a visitor and as a lodger on different censuses. Most censuses list him as English but one suggests he may have been born in Ireland. It may have been necessary for him to disguise this within the circles he moved in to.
He began as a General Legal Clerk but then became a Photographist working for Nicholas Henneman. Nicholas Henneman taught Rejlander the photographic process and Rejlander went on to become very important in this field. At Henneman and Co, Edmund sent out photographic supplies to Fox Talbot, another pioneering Photographer, and the letters accompanying these have surivived and are part of the Fox Talbot online archive. In the archive he is listed as President of the London Horticultural Society which later became the Royal Horticultural Society. On the final census before his death, he is listed as a Professor of English and Drawing, which fits with Schoolmaster and also shows a considerable development from Legal Clerk. If all this is true, then he was quite a man, with wide ranging interests and a great deal of success. He may not have been the brightest star, with his own wikipedia entry, but he was very likely their contemporary...
Except he died and left a very young Kate who had no access in all likelihood to his social circles following his death. Living with her much poorer maternal family from such a young age, what friends and connections she would have had, if her father had lived, were considerably reduced, however, she did have a career herself. I found her in 1891 working at Whiteley's, the worlds first department store. The staff lived in and worked 17 hour days, six days a week and a huge number of rules they had to live by. She is listed as a Draper Assistant.
So Kate was a Drapers Assistant in a department store with no fixed address as soon as she married and William Owen was a Draper who required the address of Kate's family in order to get married, before settling in London. Chances are, they met via Whiteleys. William Owen either worked there too or he visited the store in a professional capacity.
What I find really interesting about this family is this cycle of self made intellectual men, parents who do not survive to look after their children, children in the care of others. There is a real link to the creative, to the arts too but they were not the stars, they were the clerks and critics and teachers. Kate, Owen Edgar and my Grandfather all lost a parent or two in childhood and of these, only Owen Edgar did not fall into care, probably because of Annie Argent.
I don't see this cycle in my branch of the family but I do see it in my Uncle's. he too is a brilliant intellectual but not a shining star. He is successful but you are unlikely to hear of him but you would admire his work... He is a Photographer and a Scientist. And his wife died leaving my cousins as children. It seems to me that there is a tangled web of life lessons and karma being unpicked.
I still have a lot of work to do and connections to make, but I think I have the bones of the story.
My maternal Grandfathers side of the family as always been intriguing. There is mystery there for sure. My Grandfather was a music critic, but a well loved one. He was close to making a breakthrough and writing for one of the national newspapers but he died of Hodgkins leaving a fiance, an ex-wife and two children.
He fought in the Second World War in India and he rode a horse and may possibly have been a PoW. His family was very poor, his Dad dead and he often found himself in a Childrens Home with his brother. There are hints of abuse while in care. There are hints of lots of things to be honest but precious few facts. What is clear though is how respected and loved he was. Years and years later my uncle visited a pub in the town my Grandfather had worked in, and was recognised as a son of my grandfathers...
So it is unclear, the story of my Great Grandfather Owen Edgar, because most of it is just too recent. He was a Furnishing Assistant and fought in the First World War and may have died of TB but I have no idea when... He first appears on a census in 1901 at the age of 8 living with his father William Owen and Annie. When I was able to find his 1911 census record though, things changed. The 1911 census lists the length of the marriage and the number of children born to the woman and how many are still alive and dead. Annie never had any children and had not been married to William Owen long enough to be Owen Edgar's Mother. A pencil written note on the census record confirmed that this was correct and Annie was not Owen Edgar's Mother.
Now this branch of the family has a common surname and lived in London. Finding them was impossible because I had no way to separate them from others. I decided to order Owen Edgar's birth certificate and this gave me an address for them in 1893 and his Mother's maiden name, she was called Kate.
My next step was to find their wedding details and this again was very, very hard. in 1893, they lived within the bounds of Greater London but in 1892, they were based only a few streets away, but it counted as Middlesex. It took me hours of searching to find them, but I did and I finally ordered the wedding certificate and received it last weekend.
I already knew that William Owen was a Draper but I discovered his father was called John and worked as a Millwright and that Kate's father was called Edmond L something and was a Schoolmaster. And I still could not find any of them.
The wedding certificate gave an address for William Owen in 1892, so I decided to hunt through the censuses for that address and see if William or any relative has been living there only a year before. This took some time as the district had nearly 100 sub-sections and I had to wade through, accompanied by a map of London, to find the right area. When I did there was no sign of William Owen or Kate, but there was a Walter Thomas. This was really important, because he appears as a witness on the wedding certificate!
At another dead end, I decided to start a family tree for Walter Thomas and see if it connected at all to either of them. Walter had several brothers but I paid more attention to his sister Caroline because girls change their names. Caroline married an Edward Argent and this was really important because William Owen's second wife, Annie, was an Argent too.
On looking at the census's it becomes clear that Caroline was Edward's third wife and that he had had three children with his first wife. The 1881 census shows the family which includes a daughter Ann and a niece, Kate Davis. So William Owen married Kate, using one of Kate's Uncle's address, Walter Thomas. Kate had been brought up by her Aunt Caroline in the house of her cousin by marriage, Ann. When Kate died, William Owen was married again, but this time to Kate's cousin Ann(ie). This makes sense... Annie would have been the perfect person to keep house and care for Owen Edgar.
So Kate was probably an orphan. I eventually found her both on the 1891 census and the 1871 census, both listing her as being born in Kent, obviously whoever answered the 1881 census in her adopted family was a little fuzzy on exactly where she had been born.
Kate's parents were Edmond Louis and Eliza. Eliza shared the same surname as Walter Thomas and Caroline (before she was maried) and is obviously the family connection but I have been unable to prove the connection. Children appear on one census, disappear off the next one and reappear again. This is a family that was fairly fluid in it's child care because the Father appears to have been bringing them up alone. I have yet to find any trace of Eliza before her marriage.
Edmond Louis is also an interesting enigma. He was in his 40s when he had Kate and appears to have led a very full life but discrepancies make it hard to say that I am dealing with one person who did all these things. Before his marriage he certainly moved around and appears as a visitor and as a lodger on different censuses. Most censuses list him as English but one suggests he may have been born in Ireland. It may have been necessary for him to disguise this within the circles he moved in to.
He began as a General Legal Clerk but then became a Photographist working for Nicholas Henneman. Nicholas Henneman taught Rejlander the photographic process and Rejlander went on to become very important in this field. At Henneman and Co, Edmund sent out photographic supplies to Fox Talbot, another pioneering Photographer, and the letters accompanying these have surivived and are part of the Fox Talbot online archive. In the archive he is listed as President of the London Horticultural Society which later became the Royal Horticultural Society. On the final census before his death, he is listed as a Professor of English and Drawing, which fits with Schoolmaster and also shows a considerable development from Legal Clerk. If all this is true, then he was quite a man, with wide ranging interests and a great deal of success. He may not have been the brightest star, with his own wikipedia entry, but he was very likely their contemporary...
Except he died and left a very young Kate who had no access in all likelihood to his social circles following his death. Living with her much poorer maternal family from such a young age, what friends and connections she would have had, if her father had lived, were considerably reduced, however, she did have a career herself. I found her in 1891 working at Whiteley's, the worlds first department store. The staff lived in and worked 17 hour days, six days a week and a huge number of rules they had to live by. She is listed as a Draper Assistant.
So Kate was a Drapers Assistant in a department store with no fixed address as soon as she married and William Owen was a Draper who required the address of Kate's family in order to get married, before settling in London. Chances are, they met via Whiteleys. William Owen either worked there too or he visited the store in a professional capacity.
What I find really interesting about this family is this cycle of self made intellectual men, parents who do not survive to look after their children, children in the care of others. There is a real link to the creative, to the arts too but they were not the stars, they were the clerks and critics and teachers. Kate, Owen Edgar and my Grandfather all lost a parent or two in childhood and of these, only Owen Edgar did not fall into care, probably because of Annie Argent.
I don't see this cycle in my branch of the family but I do see it in my Uncle's. he too is a brilliant intellectual but not a shining star. He is successful but you are unlikely to hear of him but you would admire his work... He is a Photographer and a Scientist. And his wife died leaving my cousins as children. It seems to me that there is a tangled web of life lessons and karma being unpicked.
I still have a lot of work to do and connections to make, but I think I have the bones of the story.
Breakthrough
So the lovely Suzi recently said in an email that she felt like I would have 'a massive breakthrough at some point' and it occurred to me I have... In fact there has been a couple... but sometimes the hard thing is working out what they mean and how to bring those words into the waking world and what sense they make here, if that is clear to anyone!
A while back I started suffering from nightmares. I found this scary because I have never had dreams that dealt with fears where I have been very scared before, not even as a child. My sister would drift through my room to my parents bedroom, pale as a ghost. i used to be quite envious of the excuse to go sleep with Mum and Dad, and so, sometimes when I was awake in the night and wanted to sleep with them, I would imagine bad things to summon up a few tears...
So suddenly to find myself dreaming nasty things was a challenge. I began to wonder and worry about what these dreams were saying about the state of my mental health! A girl who bumped into an old college friend and accepted the offer of dinner to catch up only to discover he had always been fixated on her and had become a serial killer, killing girls like her... The little boy kidnapped... The teenage girl left alone in an airport, with no ticket but after security.... The couple killed in their home.... There was no actual bad endins though, because I was able to twist the story away from the truly awful and help the main characters escape.
Then one night I dreamt I was in my bedroom lying on my bed but it was a glorious day and the room was flooded with sunlight. I turned to look at the person next to me and it turned out to be my spirit guide. He told me not to worry, that I was dreaming the fears of my ancestors. And after that, I stopped worrying that this was my unhealthy mind and accepted that these were not my fears, not my scenarios.
For a couple of weeks my dreams were filled with fearful scenarios but as I stopped blocking them and worrying about them, this was no longer a problem. Some of the dreams could even be pinpointed to whereabouts they would have come from. In one dream, a lady was driving a delivery van but it carried important cargo. She was stopped by a police officer who turned out to be with the enemy but she was able to defend herself and get the cargo away. In the Second World War, my Grandfather was a driver. I imagine he transported all sorts of things around and i can also imagine my Gran thinking up all sorts of scenarios....
I recently started reading Robert Moss's The Dreamers Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying and the Other Side. One thing he says is that sometimes we need to use our imaginations for the dead. I think this is what I have been doing. I think some of my Ancestors have been trapped in a recurring nightmare that goes round and round and they just don't know how to escape. I think I have been dreaming them ways out.
The best example I have of this was the falling dream. In this dream, not surprisingly, I was falling with another person. We would fall towards the ground and then, just before we hit we would pass through a gate and fall all over again. I tried all sorts of possible ways of getting us out of there.... I remember one of them was a helicopter free falling by us and trying to pull us in but the danger of the propellers and matching speeds made it impossible. In the end, a couple of men with parachutes jumped out and fell with us and caught us to them and strapped us to them and brought us safely down.
Can you imagine falling, over and over, unable to think of a way out?
I think dreaming fears is linked to my having passed the Spider Gate. I wonder how passing other gates would affect my dreaming?
The other breakthrough involved a dream where I was eating in a mediterranean restaurant. I was talking to the waiter and I told him I didn't know what I was. He was surprised and disappeared into the back and came back with his Grandmother. She placed her finger on my third eye and shut her eyes. When she was done, she opened them and told me I was a Walker, A Weaver and a Shifter.
I have only the vaguest idea of what these things mean really and I have even less idea about what benefits they can have in the physical world. They seem to me, to be very much talents of the inbetween, of the Dreamer. That too makes sense too, because the wind at the heart of my circle is the Dreamer and my totem for this is the Crow.
A Dreamwalker is one who can walk into the dreams of others. I know I do this. I walk through their dreams, their stories and I wear their bodies and think their thoughts. But I don't understand the subtleties of this and you can be sure there are some. I feel quite strongly that these are well defined talents with hidden depths whose paths we have lost somewhat or are only remembered by a few. I also find it easy to navigate the dream world on journeys. Once I have been somewhere I can get to and from that place very easily on future occasions. I just open a door and step through. There are hints that many Native American Indians just vanished when White Men came, that they stepped through the veil, opened a door and went elsewhere.
A Shifter, obviously shifts shape and again this is something I do. I often wear feathers to travel in journeys and I have twice danced the elements at the Equinox in the shape of a Dragon. Many books talk of how Native American Indians used to be able to shift shape with ease, in this reality.
A Weaver is the less obvious I think but before the dream I had a journey at Samhain. We were to connect with an ancient Ancestor, back in the dawns of time, we were to make our way to an ancestral cave. I did this and got a little more than I bargained for. I met with an adept in a dark hole in the back of a cave. He was quite a character and told me off if I started to drift or lose focus. He told me how Spider Woman wove the worlds into being. He showed me her web, how everything is made from the same huge giant web, twisted and curved and prodded and pulled into all the shapes of everything we are, connected. He showed me how to unpick as well as how to breath spirits through the web into a shape.
My suspicion that this must be what a Weaver is was confirmed by Robert Moss's book, he talks of how in many of the lands of the dead, the matter is formed using imagination from an underlying grey material which is plastic in form. His description of the material was familiar although different - it is so hard to describe impossible things! He called the people who make things over in this realm of Memorydream, Weavers.
So I have been gifted with three talents and they all relate directly to the dreaming. I have a vague idea of what they are, but no idea of the deeper meanings. I have no idea whether or not I can affect anything in the waking world in the slightest. Of course, if we lived in the dreaming then things would be very different indeed. I know I can help myself with these gifts, that they make journeying and dreaming easier for me and that I learn a lot from both, but I have no idea how I can help others in reality and I have a lack of active control although I think the Dreamer in me knows exactly what it is doing and does it, when the conscious me does not get in the way!
I think spider links into my life now in several ways. I think Crow is beautiful and I know that Dreaming is the best gift of all.
A while back I started suffering from nightmares. I found this scary because I have never had dreams that dealt with fears where I have been very scared before, not even as a child. My sister would drift through my room to my parents bedroom, pale as a ghost. i used to be quite envious of the excuse to go sleep with Mum and Dad, and so, sometimes when I was awake in the night and wanted to sleep with them, I would imagine bad things to summon up a few tears...
So suddenly to find myself dreaming nasty things was a challenge. I began to wonder and worry about what these dreams were saying about the state of my mental health! A girl who bumped into an old college friend and accepted the offer of dinner to catch up only to discover he had always been fixated on her and had become a serial killer, killing girls like her... The little boy kidnapped... The teenage girl left alone in an airport, with no ticket but after security.... The couple killed in their home.... There was no actual bad endins though, because I was able to twist the story away from the truly awful and help the main characters escape.
Then one night I dreamt I was in my bedroom lying on my bed but it was a glorious day and the room was flooded with sunlight. I turned to look at the person next to me and it turned out to be my spirit guide. He told me not to worry, that I was dreaming the fears of my ancestors. And after that, I stopped worrying that this was my unhealthy mind and accepted that these were not my fears, not my scenarios.
For a couple of weeks my dreams were filled with fearful scenarios but as I stopped blocking them and worrying about them, this was no longer a problem. Some of the dreams could even be pinpointed to whereabouts they would have come from. In one dream, a lady was driving a delivery van but it carried important cargo. She was stopped by a police officer who turned out to be with the enemy but she was able to defend herself and get the cargo away. In the Second World War, my Grandfather was a driver. I imagine he transported all sorts of things around and i can also imagine my Gran thinking up all sorts of scenarios....
I recently started reading Robert Moss's The Dreamers Book of the Dead: A Soul Traveler's Guide to Death, Dying and the Other Side. One thing he says is that sometimes we need to use our imaginations for the dead. I think this is what I have been doing. I think some of my Ancestors have been trapped in a recurring nightmare that goes round and round and they just don't know how to escape. I think I have been dreaming them ways out.
The best example I have of this was the falling dream. In this dream, not surprisingly, I was falling with another person. We would fall towards the ground and then, just before we hit we would pass through a gate and fall all over again. I tried all sorts of possible ways of getting us out of there.... I remember one of them was a helicopter free falling by us and trying to pull us in but the danger of the propellers and matching speeds made it impossible. In the end, a couple of men with parachutes jumped out and fell with us and caught us to them and strapped us to them and brought us safely down.
Can you imagine falling, over and over, unable to think of a way out?
I think dreaming fears is linked to my having passed the Spider Gate. I wonder how passing other gates would affect my dreaming?
The other breakthrough involved a dream where I was eating in a mediterranean restaurant. I was talking to the waiter and I told him I didn't know what I was. He was surprised and disappeared into the back and came back with his Grandmother. She placed her finger on my third eye and shut her eyes. When she was done, she opened them and told me I was a Walker, A Weaver and a Shifter.
I have only the vaguest idea of what these things mean really and I have even less idea about what benefits they can have in the physical world. They seem to me, to be very much talents of the inbetween, of the Dreamer. That too makes sense too, because the wind at the heart of my circle is the Dreamer and my totem for this is the Crow.
A Dreamwalker is one who can walk into the dreams of others. I know I do this. I walk through their dreams, their stories and I wear their bodies and think their thoughts. But I don't understand the subtleties of this and you can be sure there are some. I feel quite strongly that these are well defined talents with hidden depths whose paths we have lost somewhat or are only remembered by a few. I also find it easy to navigate the dream world on journeys. Once I have been somewhere I can get to and from that place very easily on future occasions. I just open a door and step through. There are hints that many Native American Indians just vanished when White Men came, that they stepped through the veil, opened a door and went elsewhere.
A Shifter, obviously shifts shape and again this is something I do. I often wear feathers to travel in journeys and I have twice danced the elements at the Equinox in the shape of a Dragon. Many books talk of how Native American Indians used to be able to shift shape with ease, in this reality.
A Weaver is the less obvious I think but before the dream I had a journey at Samhain. We were to connect with an ancient Ancestor, back in the dawns of time, we were to make our way to an ancestral cave. I did this and got a little more than I bargained for. I met with an adept in a dark hole in the back of a cave. He was quite a character and told me off if I started to drift or lose focus. He told me how Spider Woman wove the worlds into being. He showed me her web, how everything is made from the same huge giant web, twisted and curved and prodded and pulled into all the shapes of everything we are, connected. He showed me how to unpick as well as how to breath spirits through the web into a shape.
My suspicion that this must be what a Weaver is was confirmed by Robert Moss's book, he talks of how in many of the lands of the dead, the matter is formed using imagination from an underlying grey material which is plastic in form. His description of the material was familiar although different - it is so hard to describe impossible things! He called the people who make things over in this realm of Memorydream, Weavers.
So I have been gifted with three talents and they all relate directly to the dreaming. I have a vague idea of what they are, but no idea of the deeper meanings. I have no idea whether or not I can affect anything in the waking world in the slightest. Of course, if we lived in the dreaming then things would be very different indeed. I know I can help myself with these gifts, that they make journeying and dreaming easier for me and that I learn a lot from both, but I have no idea how I can help others in reality and I have a lack of active control although I think the Dreamer in me knows exactly what it is doing and does it, when the conscious me does not get in the way!
I think spider links into my life now in several ways. I think Crow is beautiful and I know that Dreaming is the best gift of all.
Music for the Moons
So I have so much to post about! I am going to start with music because I have not posted my songs for the last three Moons and I want too.... The songs that jump out at me always seem to touch me at a deeper level when I actually read the lyrics, it isn't just the sound.
For the Moon of Welcome we had Faster by Within Temptation. This just jumped off the radio at me.... We listen to Planet Rock a lot. And I love the words too. It is a song about the joy of living! Which is great for Welcome! Running towards life... Not hiding, not accepting lies, not living with fear, accepting your feelings....
The delights of flicking through music TV channels brought me Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans and I fell in love with it instantly. I don't remember having heard it before. The song is all about a relationship that goes south when he tries to give her more by growing his career and she loses him to it. Except that it is clear from the song that he will always be the only man for her and in the video you see them both sinking beneath the water together, and there is a light shining up at them. Everything about this song makes me think of true love and past lives, that strongest of emotions that can and does survive death. I feel like this. I think F and I have been here together many times and this is what I guess I affirmed this last time throught his moon....
Finally for the Moon of Drama we have Tom Petty's Learning to Fly. I heard this on Planet Rock again and loved it but wasn't sure if it was truly my song for the month and forgot about it until a dream this week brought it back and I woke with it in my head... It has been there ever since! The more I look at it and think about it and watch the video. the more inspired by it I am. He is a very clever song writer for sure. To me, this song is all about Drama and dealing with it, learning to live with things after they have happened, the good and the bad without letting them get you down. Be those dramas atomic weapons testing, drugs, love or the death of JFK, we can't stay in that moment and we have to learn how to keep our equilibrium or regain it quickly, so we can keep on flying....
For the Moon of Welcome we had Faster by Within Temptation. This just jumped off the radio at me.... We listen to Planet Rock a lot. And I love the words too. It is a song about the joy of living! Which is great for Welcome! Running towards life... Not hiding, not accepting lies, not living with fear, accepting your feelings....
The delights of flicking through music TV channels brought me Lana Del Rey's Blue Jeans and I fell in love with it instantly. I don't remember having heard it before. The song is all about a relationship that goes south when he tries to give her more by growing his career and she loses him to it. Except that it is clear from the song that he will always be the only man for her and in the video you see them both sinking beneath the water together, and there is a light shining up at them. Everything about this song makes me think of true love and past lives, that strongest of emotions that can and does survive death. I feel like this. I think F and I have been here together many times and this is what I guess I affirmed this last time throught his moon....
Finally for the Moon of Drama we have Tom Petty's Learning to Fly. I heard this on Planet Rock again and loved it but wasn't sure if it was truly my song for the month and forgot about it until a dream this week brought it back and I woke with it in my head... It has been there ever since! The more I look at it and think about it and watch the video. the more inspired by it I am. He is a very clever song writer for sure. To me, this song is all about Drama and dealing with it, learning to live with things after they have happened, the good and the bad without letting them get you down. Be those dramas atomic weapons testing, drugs, love or the death of JFK, we can't stay in that moment and we have to learn how to keep our equilibrium or regain it quickly, so we can keep on flying....
Thursday, 6 December 2012
Life Balance
So F got home just as I was finishing my last post and I told him I was going to drum for a bit. My drum is amazing... It may not have the loudest 'sound' in the audible sense. In a group, it definately does not shout the loudest. But those lower sounds the ones you hear as much as you feel, there it really, really packs a punch. And she sang last night.
Ok so I find it hard right now to maintain the drumming but I am sure I will get better and my journey last night din' require me to be that deep or focused. There was no words I might miss if I wavered a little.
From my tree all this black stuff flowed from me and it turned into a river and carried me away and then into an ocean or lake, covering the land as far as I could see. It was sticky and thick as tar and I was held fast. Crows came and landed on me and pecked at me, particularly my umbilical cord.
It was a journey where I needed to figure out what to do. First I tried diving down in to the tar which failed. Then I called on the tiny dragon who lives inside me to burn it away. I ended up back on top and it was all burning and drying out but not diminishing. So I called on the rain to put the fire out and the tar rehydrated too. I knew I could not fly away for the tar held me tight and would have made my wings horrid.
I was stuck, so I thought about what I was, what gifts I have in the dreaming and I remembered weaving. So I took a ball of black that was my angst at my colleague and blew a bird spirit into it and it flew away. I did this for my feelings towards my Boss and any other pieces of negativity I could think of.
When I was done the black was gone and I could see land around me, bare and naked. So I breathed some of the good things about me and my life through and made plants. Some fo them were little trees straight away and the birds came back to live there.
I guess what I worked through was that you can change how your emotions look and feel but unless you transform what they are actually made of into something else, then you are still stuck. I tried thinking my way through, avoidance, anger and cleansing in effect. You can also see it as calling on the four elements... but only the fifth could help. I feel much better today and I felt much better straight away.
I think these techniques are incredibly powerful, dreaming, journeying, visualization, anything that takes you to where ever it is we go, where ever you think that might be.
Ok so I find it hard right now to maintain the drumming but I am sure I will get better and my journey last night din' require me to be that deep or focused. There was no words I might miss if I wavered a little.
From my tree all this black stuff flowed from me and it turned into a river and carried me away and then into an ocean or lake, covering the land as far as I could see. It was sticky and thick as tar and I was held fast. Crows came and landed on me and pecked at me, particularly my umbilical cord.
It was a journey where I needed to figure out what to do. First I tried diving down in to the tar which failed. Then I called on the tiny dragon who lives inside me to burn it away. I ended up back on top and it was all burning and drying out but not diminishing. So I called on the rain to put the fire out and the tar rehydrated too. I knew I could not fly away for the tar held me tight and would have made my wings horrid.
I was stuck, so I thought about what I was, what gifts I have in the dreaming and I remembered weaving. So I took a ball of black that was my angst at my colleague and blew a bird spirit into it and it flew away. I did this for my feelings towards my Boss and any other pieces of negativity I could think of.
When I was done the black was gone and I could see land around me, bare and naked. So I breathed some of the good things about me and my life through and made plants. Some fo them were little trees straight away and the birds came back to live there.
I guess what I worked through was that you can change how your emotions look and feel but unless you transform what they are actually made of into something else, then you are still stuck. I tried thinking my way through, avoidance, anger and cleansing in effect. You can also see it as calling on the four elements... but only the fifth could help. I feel much better today and I felt much better straight away.
I think these techniques are incredibly powerful, dreaming, journeying, visualization, anything that takes you to where ever it is we go, where ever you think that might be.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
Work
Well I can't say too much really but things at work have gotten tricky and annoying. We have a variety of people who can not currently fill their normal roles within the team. We also have a variety of people who do not wish to pull their weight. The two may or may not coincide but the combined situations are putting a lot more pressure on those in the team who do work hard, all day, every day.
When you are behind and busting a gut to catch up and there is someone else who is supposed to also be doing that job who is working at less than a fifth the speed you are it is kind of frustrating. They avoid our core task as much as possible, doing anything they can to escape it and when they do do it, they surf the net, chat, text as much as they can. The worst thing is my Boss is sat right there!
This moon is all about what to keep in and what to keep out - Drama with it's flip side of repression, or to me, getting it out, versus keeping it in. Now, in chatting with my Boss about the situations in the team I have mentioned my partner in crime's attitude but my Boss does not want to see it and certainly does not want to deal with it. How far do you have to go? Do I need to pull with the work log and shove it in my Bosses face? Do I need to suggest that I might feel inclined to take it to my Boss's Boss if my Boss fails to do anything?
The problem is my Boss is half the problem - there is a lack of direction for most of the team at times, a trusting that we know what to do and will do it, so weaker, less motivated members of the team tend to drift. My Boss also often sits and surfs the net, spends large amounts of time on personal calls, takes long lunches, disappears who knows where for long periods of time.
I am furstrated that is for sure, but I also don't wish to watch potential overtime pilling up for Christmas.
So the question here is balance. How much should I keep in and how much should I let out?
When you are behind and busting a gut to catch up and there is someone else who is supposed to also be doing that job who is working at less than a fifth the speed you are it is kind of frustrating. They avoid our core task as much as possible, doing anything they can to escape it and when they do do it, they surf the net, chat, text as much as they can. The worst thing is my Boss is sat right there!
This moon is all about what to keep in and what to keep out - Drama with it's flip side of repression, or to me, getting it out, versus keeping it in. Now, in chatting with my Boss about the situations in the team I have mentioned my partner in crime's attitude but my Boss does not want to see it and certainly does not want to deal with it. How far do you have to go? Do I need to pull with the work log and shove it in my Bosses face? Do I need to suggest that I might feel inclined to take it to my Boss's Boss if my Boss fails to do anything?
The problem is my Boss is half the problem - there is a lack of direction for most of the team at times, a trusting that we know what to do and will do it, so weaker, less motivated members of the team tend to drift. My Boss also often sits and surfs the net, spends large amounts of time on personal calls, takes long lunches, disappears who knows where for long periods of time.
I am furstrated that is for sure, but I also don't wish to watch potential overtime pilling up for Christmas.
So the question here is balance. How much should I keep in and how much should I let out?
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Rabbit
We have now passed into the Moon of Drama and my totem for this Moon is the Rabbit. I was a bit disappointed with Rabbit when I first got it. My Medicine Cards book describes Rabbit as being all about Fear and that is not neccessarily easy to see as a positive thing! Rabbit has many aspects though and this is the aspect focused on for the cards in order to lend a balance to the deck as a whole. Mind you, Fear is not the problem to me that it once was either.
Rabbit is the Fear Caller, because Rabbit fears everything and what it fears it calls to it. Birds of prey, disease, snakes, traps, foxes, everything eats and kills Rabbit. Whenever you see a Rabbit chances are it is terrified, if it isn't, it is only ever one breath away from terror. Having passed the Spider Gate earlier this year, I think my views on Fear have changed. But there is a power here too - Rabbit sustains everything else and it's fear helps keep it safe. Despite all the difficulties they face, Rabbits thrive....
The European Rabbit is native to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeiria where it is the staple food of the Iberian Lynx and Spanish Imperial Eagle. Unfortunately it is in decline there due to introduced diseases, habitat loss and hunting. This is having a huge impact on it's predators.
Rabbits however are doing very well everywhere else. They have been introduced everywhere except Antartica and sub-Saharan Africa. They were first introduced to Britain by the Romans as a source of food and it is hard to imagine this country without them. I imagine that Hares were much more common before Rabbits were introduced. Their introduction displaces native Rabbits and Hares and in Australia, the Bilby. In Australia they have caused huge issues because they have no predator there.
This situation has resulted in the use of biological control to try and prevent their increase. Firstly Myxomatosis and then rabbit haemorhagic disease. Populations are partially resistant to Myxomatosis now and although there are frequent times when the viruses are present, they do not kill every rabbit now. However at work, if ever we see a rabbit with these diseases, we will try and kill it. The suffering they cause is immense.
Rabbits live in warrens with a group of between 2 and 10 rabbits. Rabbits are agressive and territorial towards each other and this helps to ensure their survival. Females are more territorial but do not defend their territory, instead they leave dung piles and the potency of these pellets shows their dominance. Females will move into neighbouring territories when they mature but male rabbits will move further and have to fight for females.
High status rabbits are polygamus with one male having more than one female but lower status rabbits, both males and females are monogamous. Male status is defined by quite a few factors, how many females visit his territory, how far he travels each day, how much time he spends resting with females and how many warrens he visits. Females will indicate they are fertile by chinning objects in their territory, covering them with scent from glands in their chin.
Maleswill fight and often injure each other and sometimes even kill. They kick with their strong hind legs, bite and scratch. They also squirt urine which enrages their opponent.
So much for the imge of cute, peaceable rabbits!
OK, so they do eat grass... They are most active at dawn and dusk but are out and about during the day and at night. They browse and graze and eat a wide range of vegetation along with their grass. They like mixed habitats best as these give them some cover as well as grazing.
They are incredibly fertile and gestation is only 31 days with them becoming fertile again straight away. They also ovulate when they have sex so there is no time they are not fertile. A female can be pregnant constantly for 8 months and produce 30 - 40 offspring a year. The female is the only one that feeds them, returning once a day for four weeks. They are born blind and furless. The female marks the nesting burrow to deter others from going in. Male rabbits do have some sort of hierarchical investment in their young though.
Rabbits have been kept for food, killed as pests and kept as pets. There are a huge number of breeds. Some are used for their fur and the Angora is unusual in that it's fur is used for yarn and they naturally moult. I have never been convinced that they make interesting pets but a friend had a house rabbit once and the stories he tells suggest that rabbit brought up right and trained can be very different.
I like to think of this moon as being all about getting it out and keeping it in, emotionally and finding the balance between the two. Rabbits definately are good at getting it out - their aggression and fear are plain for everyone to see and everyone can tell they are amorous *laugh*. They emotions make them resilient and tough as well as making them a source of creativity for nature as a whole. Endlessly fertile, but potentially highly destructive in their fertility!....
Rabbits are warriors. They deal with their fear and survive. They fight when they need to.
Rabbit is the Fear Caller, because Rabbit fears everything and what it fears it calls to it. Birds of prey, disease, snakes, traps, foxes, everything eats and kills Rabbit. Whenever you see a Rabbit chances are it is terrified, if it isn't, it is only ever one breath away from terror. Having passed the Spider Gate earlier this year, I think my views on Fear have changed. But there is a power here too - Rabbit sustains everything else and it's fear helps keep it safe. Despite all the difficulties they face, Rabbits thrive....
The European Rabbit is native to Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeiria where it is the staple food of the Iberian Lynx and Spanish Imperial Eagle. Unfortunately it is in decline there due to introduced diseases, habitat loss and hunting. This is having a huge impact on it's predators.
Rabbits however are doing very well everywhere else. They have been introduced everywhere except Antartica and sub-Saharan Africa. They were first introduced to Britain by the Romans as a source of food and it is hard to imagine this country without them. I imagine that Hares were much more common before Rabbits were introduced. Their introduction displaces native Rabbits and Hares and in Australia, the Bilby. In Australia they have caused huge issues because they have no predator there.
This situation has resulted in the use of biological control to try and prevent their increase. Firstly Myxomatosis and then rabbit haemorhagic disease. Populations are partially resistant to Myxomatosis now and although there are frequent times when the viruses are present, they do not kill every rabbit now. However at work, if ever we see a rabbit with these diseases, we will try and kill it. The suffering they cause is immense.
Rabbits live in warrens with a group of between 2 and 10 rabbits. Rabbits are agressive and territorial towards each other and this helps to ensure their survival. Females are more territorial but do not defend their territory, instead they leave dung piles and the potency of these pellets shows their dominance. Females will move into neighbouring territories when they mature but male rabbits will move further and have to fight for females.
High status rabbits are polygamus with one male having more than one female but lower status rabbits, both males and females are monogamous. Male status is defined by quite a few factors, how many females visit his territory, how far he travels each day, how much time he spends resting with females and how many warrens he visits. Females will indicate they are fertile by chinning objects in their territory, covering them with scent from glands in their chin.
Maleswill fight and often injure each other and sometimes even kill. They kick with their strong hind legs, bite and scratch. They also squirt urine which enrages their opponent.
So much for the imge of cute, peaceable rabbits!
OK, so they do eat grass... They are most active at dawn and dusk but are out and about during the day and at night. They browse and graze and eat a wide range of vegetation along with their grass. They like mixed habitats best as these give them some cover as well as grazing.
They are incredibly fertile and gestation is only 31 days with them becoming fertile again straight away. They also ovulate when they have sex so there is no time they are not fertile. A female can be pregnant constantly for 8 months and produce 30 - 40 offspring a year. The female is the only one that feeds them, returning once a day for four weeks. They are born blind and furless. The female marks the nesting burrow to deter others from going in. Male rabbits do have some sort of hierarchical investment in their young though.
Rabbits have been kept for food, killed as pests and kept as pets. There are a huge number of breeds. Some are used for their fur and the Angora is unusual in that it's fur is used for yarn and they naturally moult. I have never been convinced that they make interesting pets but a friend had a house rabbit once and the stories he tells suggest that rabbit brought up right and trained can be very different.
I like to think of this moon as being all about getting it out and keeping it in, emotionally and finding the balance between the two. Rabbits definately are good at getting it out - their aggression and fear are plain for everyone to see and everyone can tell they are amorous *laugh*. They emotions make them resilient and tough as well as making them a source of creativity for nature as a whole. Endlessly fertile, but potentially highly destructive in their fertility!....
Rabbits are warriors. They deal with their fear and survive. They fight when they need to.
Sleeping Dogs
So I have been getting a bit of bad back recently and not sleeping so well. It has come on slow, but got bad enough recently for me to stop and think about why. The answer was Little Dog. She has been sleeping on our bed now for three and a half years, pretty much ever since Big Dog died.
She is part Collie has had their brains and the nerviness that a lot of Collies have. Losing her mate was tough. She would come up on the bed for morning cuddles but some mornings we were not awake at the right time (who likes a lie in at the weekend?) so she started getting up while we were asleep. It slowly got earlier and earlier until very soon she was spending the entire night up. Eventually we stopped pretending and she started the night up there too.
The problem is, she spreads out and Fand I end up with just enough room on the edges of the bed. I think part of this is a desire to snuggle up and keep warm but it made it very hard to move in the night. Moving would require waking up and shifting her. I don't begrudge her though, I think she really did need the comfort.
F and I talked a couple of nights back and agreed it was time to kick her off. So I went out and brought the bestest dog bed I could. A huge sheepskin lined thing with sides. I also brought a single duvet to go inside. we had it downstairs in the evening and it was obviously a success. Then at bedtime it went upstairs, on the floor right next to me.
When F came to bed later, we started the process and I expected a night of kicking her off the bed. I don't know how many times we did kick her off the bed. One time she was very persistant, she whined a bit and stood at the end of the bed with her head resting on it, looking at us. She wandered the house. She stood there so long I fell back asleep. Eventually she was persuaded to go back to her deluxe new bed, and stayed there the rest of the night.
I didn't sleep so well - part missing her, part watching for her creeping up. And then, the second I came awake, the briefest of seconds in which, left alone, I would have been back asleep again, she was awake, stood up with her front feet on our pallet bed platform, tail wagging and overjoyed to see me and esperate for a cuddle... I couldn't say no. Yesterday she needed a bit of reassurance to begin with. I think she needed to know that she was not being sent to a different bed because we were cross...
As we went to tbed last night we were not sure what would happen. She began the evening snuggled up with us on the sofa before migrating to the armchair for a good sleep. Unusually, about quarter of an hour before bed she came over for another cuddle. And then it was time and she went straight to her new bed and stayed there without any fuss until F woke this morning. Then she finished the morning with me on the bed.
I can't believe how easy and successful it has all been! My back is already feeling better and I slept so well last night. The only downside is I don't remember any of my dreams. Little Dog is happy too and obviously warm enough by herself... She has her house coat on at night as well as a fleece lined bed with duvet.
There is more to all this though, signs of a deeper healing I have been dreaming. A part of me, dormant, dead, slowly coming back to life.
She is part Collie has had their brains and the nerviness that a lot of Collies have. Losing her mate was tough. She would come up on the bed for morning cuddles but some mornings we were not awake at the right time (who likes a lie in at the weekend?) so she started getting up while we were asleep. It slowly got earlier and earlier until very soon she was spending the entire night up. Eventually we stopped pretending and she started the night up there too.
The problem is, she spreads out and Fand I end up with just enough room on the edges of the bed. I think part of this is a desire to snuggle up and keep warm but it made it very hard to move in the night. Moving would require waking up and shifting her. I don't begrudge her though, I think she really did need the comfort.
F and I talked a couple of nights back and agreed it was time to kick her off. So I went out and brought the bestest dog bed I could. A huge sheepskin lined thing with sides. I also brought a single duvet to go inside. we had it downstairs in the evening and it was obviously a success. Then at bedtime it went upstairs, on the floor right next to me.
When F came to bed later, we started the process and I expected a night of kicking her off the bed. I don't know how many times we did kick her off the bed. One time she was very persistant, she whined a bit and stood at the end of the bed with her head resting on it, looking at us. She wandered the house. She stood there so long I fell back asleep. Eventually she was persuaded to go back to her deluxe new bed, and stayed there the rest of the night.
I didn't sleep so well - part missing her, part watching for her creeping up. And then, the second I came awake, the briefest of seconds in which, left alone, I would have been back asleep again, she was awake, stood up with her front feet on our pallet bed platform, tail wagging and overjoyed to see me and esperate for a cuddle... I couldn't say no. Yesterday she needed a bit of reassurance to begin with. I think she needed to know that she was not being sent to a different bed because we were cross...
As we went to tbed last night we were not sure what would happen. She began the evening snuggled up with us on the sofa before migrating to the armchair for a good sleep. Unusually, about quarter of an hour before bed she came over for another cuddle. And then it was time and she went straight to her new bed and stayed there without any fuss until F woke this morning. Then she finished the morning with me on the bed.
I can't believe how easy and successful it has all been! My back is already feeling better and I slept so well last night. The only downside is I don't remember any of my dreams. Little Dog is happy too and obviously warm enough by herself... She has her house coat on at night as well as a fleece lined bed with duvet.
There is more to all this though, signs of a deeper healing I have been dreaming. A part of me, dormant, dead, slowly coming back to life.
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